What can you do with a chemistry degree?
Where chemistry graduates actually work, and how exposed those jobs are to AI. Built from ACS 2020-2024 5-year PUMS: 30,868 people whose bachelor's degree is in this field, aged 22-64.
Chemistry graduates split between medicine, laboratories and classrooms. The largest group, about 8 in 100, work as physicians, and about 7 in 100 work as chemists, the one job named for the degree. Pharmacists follow at about 3 in 100. Secondary school teachers, elementary and middle school teachers and software developers are each about 2 in 100, and lawyers about 1.5 in 100.
About 47 in 100 work in roles we do not score, a larger gap than on most major pages. The largest are physical scientists in other fields and college teachers, at about 6 in 100 each, then managers in other roles at about 5 in 100 and other life scientists at about 2 in 100.
This page covers about 53% of graduates, using Census data on more than 30,000 people with a chemistry degree, matched to the occupation pages on this site, so it gives no overall verdict. The biology page sends a larger share of graduates into clinical jobs.
How exposed are chemistry jobs to AI?
We give chemistry no overall verdict. Coverage is 53%, under our 60% bar, and the scored jobs split three ways: about 45% of scored graduates work in AI-resistant jobs, 40% in At risk jobs and 15% in Safe jobs, so no protected group reaches the 70% our rule needs.
Chemists, about 7% of all graduates, rate At risk with a structural score of 31 (69 out of 100 exposure), although BLS projects growth and we found no documented case of employed chemists being replaced. The largest group, physicians at about 8%, and pharmacists rate AI-resistant despite the paperwork, because licensing ties the work to a named person. Software developers, about 2%, rate At risk. Confidence is insufficient.
These figures cover the 53% of chemistry graduates who work in occupations we score. The other 47% work in roles we do not cover (largest: Physical Scientists, all Other; Postsecondary Teachers; Other Managers). Signal 01 averages each job's own structural exposure, weighted by how many graduates work there; it describes tasks, not whether jobs will disappear.
Where chemistry graduates actually work
These 10 occupations account for 43% of chemistry graduates. The rest are spread across many smaller occupations, each under 1%. Graduates often work outside the field.
Careers next door to chemistry, least exposed first
Curated related careers of the main occupations above, ranked by structural exposure (lowest first), so you can see which neighboring routes are less and more exposed.
What the research says about AI and chemistry graduates
Chemistry appears in two of the outcome studies. Employ America (July 2025), using NY Fed data, listed chemistry with computer science and computer engineering among majors whose unemployment rate in 2023 was higher than in 2017-2018, about 2. 1 points higher for chemistry, while finding that changes in unemployment by major were not consistently linked to AI exposure. The Census Bureau working paper (CES 26-56, September 2026) scores chemistry slightly below the average major on exposure.
From 2022 to 2024, chemistry graduates' employment rate moved about 1. 4 points worse than the average major's, while their earnings moved about 3% better, on about 20,500 graduates from 2018 to 2022. The Dallas Fed does not name chemistry. The studies disagree about how much of any graduate weakness is due to AI, so these results are not evidence that AI is the cause.
Read the full evidence review: what the studies say about AI and graduate jobs →
Degrees whose graduates work in similar jobs
How this page was built
Graduate shares come from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS 2020-2024 5-year PUMS), field of degree "Chemistry" (code 5003), weighted to the population. Each occupation we cover is scored with the numbers already published on its own page on this site, then averaged by graduate share. Occupations without a page are shown but never scored. Graduates aged 22-64 are included, so the mix reflects the whole working-age group, not only recent graduates. The survey records the most recent occupation of people who were not working when surveyed (unemployed or out of the labor force), and they are counted in it: across the degrees on this site that is about 9 in 100 graduates, between 6 and 13 in 100 depending on the degree, so "work as" on this page means "work or last worked as". Sources: www2.census.gov, www2.census.gov, employamerica.org, www.dallasfed.org, www.nber.org, www.bls.gov, www.bls.gov. This page is general information, not career or educational advice.